Being “Good” at Things

Golf content on social media is my online junk food and the other day I came across a video interviewing professional golfers that asks: “What does an amateur golfer have to shoot to be considered good?” It’s a leading question because the phrasing implicitly frames a number as the answer for a qualitative measurement, but I digress. All the pros give their answers. Some say you gotta shoot a number in 90’s. Others say the 80’s. Some even say the 70’s. Then along comes Collin Morikawa: I don’t think there’s a number, but I think you have to be able to finish out every hole without, like, picking up a two-footer. Love it! I don’t want to go too deep on a social media golf interview clip, but… I love how he breaks out of the question’s implicit framing and really strikes at the heart of the qualitative question: “What does it mean to be good at golf?” Being “good”, in his eyes, is not shooting a specific number. Numbers are standardized proxies for measurement across a wide variety of…